Chapter Five
At the moment in time that Garnet was making his initial bid for elevated glory, the tallest building in the world was the Sears Tower in Chicago, whilst the accolade of tallest structure was held by the CN Tower in Toronto. The distinction is possibly only of interest to those interested in the interpretation and observation of the rules regarding the world’s tallest construction. The term building is generally interpreted to refer to an inhabited structure, be it residential or workplace, and the recorded height is often taken at the level of the uppermost storey to which it is possible to gain access; additional masts, aerials, flag poles or purely decorative skyward-ascending frippery do not add any kudos in the tallest building stakes. A tower, on the other hand, is a totally different ball game: generally serving no other function than the necessity to be high - in ancient times as a symbol of spirituality, in modern times more often as a means of connecting the world’s media with the largest population of people - every inch of height, no matter how it is gained, is worthy of measurement and record. Certainly, the distinction was not something that concerned Garnet - he had no truck with such minor details as a debate over building versus tower - his structure would be the tallest in all categories, irrespective of the rules of measurement and the definition of terms.
It was a cold February morning in 1980 that Garnet, in company with his current carer - the name now lost to history - plus the poet Saffron Davies and the artist Monotone, broke from their usual Monday routine and instead decided to pay a visit to the Guggenheim Museum. The break from routine was sufficiently of note, that Davies felt compelled to record the incident in - what she loosely described as - verse, and it is to her that we are grateful for the following account of that morning’s trip, which throws some light on Garnet’s state of mind, at a point in time when his dreams were finally beginning to be realised. The poem, from her ‘wallpaper’ period, reproduced here in its original form, without punctuation, and with its stylised idiosyncrasies included, is entitled ‘guggenheim’. In the generation since its original publication, literary critics have unanimously dismissed this particular piece as possessing no poetic merit whatsoever, but students of architecture have generally acknowledged that it reveals a sound basis of accuracy as regards the details of the construction of the unique building, although whether credit for this information should be attributed to the poet, to Mr. Wendelson, or to a textbook, is debatable. The endnotes are by Dr. David Rigg, and we are grateful to the executors of Ms. Davies’ estate for allowing permission to use this material.
guggenheim
saffron davies, 1980*
inside the nautilus shell* we slide
down down down
round round
round the diminishing helix
and into dark corners of a mind
that is not wrong*
when it creates a temple
for a new generation of pilgrims
devoted to nature
and not the machine
even if this usonian* ziggurat
reminds me of a ramp
at the car lot
four legs* prevent two wheels*
from headlong pursuit
as we descend in ever increasing pace
bored of the endless rows of captioned attempts
of man to describe his own futility
and give meaning to a life by self expression at the same time
only managing to capture the very pointlessness of his existence
all this is said as we spiral lower sucked into the vortex relentlessly
caught up by this concrete whirlpools dreadful pull allowing us no escape but down
into the black circling epicentre us all dreaming of being spat out and daylight
one relief to this descent into depression is two wheels description of a journey to the heavens
which saves us from corkscrewing into oblivion by making us dream of the skyward progression
of his own monumental high flying ambition surely equivalent to wrights visionary planning
of the illinois building* and its colossal ascension which returns man to his rightful intention
of a headlong collision course with his own redemption
••••••••••
The portrait of Jacob Wendelson Jnr. was one of the few paintings that survived the decorative purges of the Park Avenue apartment, during Garnet’s so-called ‘benevolence years’. Despite the general apathy of the Chelsea Hotel fraternity to relocate themselves bodily to the more affluent surroundings offered by Garnet in Midtown, the same people, nevertheless, showed no similar reluctance for any of their ‘works’ to be so transported, particularly when it was widely known that the collector in question was not averse to paying considerably over the market prices for his speculative acquisitions. If the perception at the Chelsea was that Garnet Wendelson was a rich fool, with more money than artistic appreciation, the same could not be said at the Lexington branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank, where the rapidly increasing figure on the bottom of the Wendelson balance sheet always guaranteed, for the wheelchair bound investor, a warm, and personal reception to the inner sanctum of Mr. Dirk Rawson, Group Manager, Upper East Side. It was the same smiling sycophant who was among the first people to be apprised of Garnet’s forthcoming ‘big plans’.
The Sears Tower had cost $150 million, when it had been completed, six years earlier. The price of real estate in Manhattan was at an even greater premium than that in Chicago, and Garnet was under no illusions that the cost of realising his vision could quite possibly exceed $250 million, making it one of the most expensive building project of its day, almost comparable in size and ambition to the Hoover Dam, constructed some twenty five years earlier, or other great building achievements such as the Interstate Highway, or even the Panama Canal. Garnet had spent almost three decades planning his superstructure, he was not going to allow a little thing, like money, to stand in the way of his dream. Mr. Rawson was not so belligerent. His perception of his own job was something akin to being a brake on a car: where others might wish to accelerate into debt, he owed them the duty of patiently, and steadily, slowing them down. He reminded Garnet that the Empire State Building had taken almost twenty years to show a profit; that the World Trade Center was still not fully tenanted. He warned that the day of the skyscraper was at an end: it was a different world now; he had seen the future, and ecology and environment would be the modern buzzwords; profits would have to be realised with an eco-friendly veneer; tall buildings were too ostentatious; green was where it would be at. Garnet listened patiently until Rawson’s speech had ended, and then repeated his request for a loan of $100 million, repayable over 25 years.
To say that Garnet had been planning his own design for the world’s tallest building for thirty years, perhaps gives a slightly inaccurate impression: the sketches for his very first skyscraper, committed to paper shortly after his dream of walking in the skies all those many years earlier, reveal a very different structure to the one he now outlined to the increasingly agitated Rawson. Garnet requested a pen and paper, right there, in the bank manager’s office and, with a skill honed over decades, rapidly began to give form to his vision of a massive new office block, to be situated alongside the waterfront by the newly reclaimed Battery Park City, the design of which would broadly resemble that of the recently constructed Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco.
By the time Garnet left Dirk Rawson’s office, he had an agreement in his pocket, and a smile on his face. His carer, Joan Thompson, even recalls that he gave her permission to take the remainder of the day off: “it was altogether unnerving,” she said.
Later that evening, alone in his apartment, Garnet once again positioned himself in front of the portrait of his dead father; viewing the painting, as he had to do, from the enforced position of cowering subserviency in his wheelchair, forever infantilised by his diminished stature, never able to confront his father on a lev
el, eye to eye, man to man. The clear, blue eyes of the portrait were undiminished with age, and the tanned face showed no additional lines than it had done when Garnet had first examined it, more than forty years before; there was not even a double chin, not even when viewed from this most unflattering of angles, to reveal the passing of the decades: Jacob Wendelson, it would appear, was equally adept at cheating time, as he had been at cheating his friends and family. It was only death that had cheated him. Garnet ran his fingers back through his own thin hair - currently heavily greased; one of Gino’s latest experiments - and decided that time had not treated him so kindly, although, then again, perhaps it was not time that was his real enemy. After all, here he was, older now than his father had been at his own death, perhaps finally standing on the verge of an achievement to outshine all previous in a long line of Wendelson success stories. He still had the bank manager’s agreement in his top pocket. He removed the document and laid it on top of the checked blanket he had lying over his lap. It had taken time, but perhaps that was exactly what he had in his favour. It would be time that would ultimately judge him, not a portrait on the wall, not a father long dead in his grave.
Garnet studied the picture once more, minutely this time, trying to take in every detail, attempting to consign to memory every painterly characteristic, assessing, accurately, its precise dimensions. He would have Thompson remove it tomorrow, he decided. He had a new Roy Lichtenstein which should fit very nicely in its place.
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